The National Novel Writing Month challenge takes place in November, so we’re halfway there and I’m surprised and pleased with what I have achieved so far and I think I should complete the 50,000 words that NaNo participants aim for.
My story is about a family’s search for their roots using genealogical resources; however I thought it would be a pretty boring book if it was just a lot of details from census returns and births, marriages and deaths data. I also thought that it could become complicated if the ancestors were just names on a page, and yet with only that sort of detail (no photos or other documents… yet…) I had to do something to engage my readers. I have made the main character reflect on his findings, imagine the people he has discovered, trying to build a picture in his mind of people who were living in Essex in the 1840’s, in Surrey in the 1850’s and were briefly in Portsea Island at the end of the decade. I have also given the family themselves story-lines; one brother has just become engaged, another brother with two failed marriages behind him is looking for a life-long partner, and the youngest brother who has been charged with the task of finding where the family came from, the youngest brother has an ambitious wife who doesn’t want to have children… as he increasingly does.
So all is going well… back to work!
Lois Elsden 